Reading a longer story: theme and what objects stand for
The theme is the big idea about life that a story shows, such as patience, honesty or friendship. To find it, ask what the main character learns and what the ending shows. A writer may use an object to stand for an idea. To explain what an object stands for, follow three steps: find an object that appears several times or matters to the plot; ask what it does in the story; ask what idea it could stand for, and give evidence. In our story, the seed stands for patience and growth, because it changes slowly while Rana waits. In your reader, The Count of Monte Cristo, read Chapter 6 on pages 36 to 40; the book’s exercises are on page 46. This is the last chapter of this term, and Review 2 on page 104 has two questions about the novel. We do not retell the chapter here.
| Object | Might stand for | Evidence in our story |
|---|---|---|
| the seed | patience and growth | “it was growing all the time” |
| dry soil | forgetting, not caring | “the soil was dry” |
| the sun | care and help | “moved it into the sun” |
On the first day of the school garden club, Mr Hamed gave each student one bean seed in a small paper pot. Rana put hers on the windowsill and forgot about it for a week. When she remembered, the soil was dry and nothing had happened. “It is just a seed,” she told her friend Dalia. “It does nothing.” Dalia already had a thin green shoot. Rana felt a little silly, but she watered the pot and moved it into the sun. For ten days she saw only soil. On the eleventh morning, a tiny green curve pushed out of the earth. Rana laughed out loud. Later that term she carried the plant, now as tall as her hand, to the garden bed. She told Mr Hamed, “I thought nothing was happening, but it was growing all the time.”
Choose an object that matters in a story or a film you know (a bell, a lantern, a bicycle). Write what it could stand for in two sentences and give one piece of evidence. Then write the theme of the story in one sentence.